Three Branches

Ever since Friedman and Roseman’s 1959 study identifying the Type A personality and its link to coronary heart disease, research into the influence of personality factors on health has caught public attention.

Type A personality is characterized by behavioral traits such as competitiveness, impatience, hostility, time-consciousness, feeling pressured, and restlessness. Type A personalities have also been linked to greater levels of perceived stress. In contrast, Type B counterparts are more laid-back and easy-going.

While further studies have offered some confirmation of the correlation between Type A personality and coronary artery disease, studies such as that done by Gallacher and colleagues found that while Type A personalities are prone to heart disease, this is probably attributable to the fact that they are more likely to be exposed to triggers that cause the disease, rather than heart disease being a direct result of their personalities. Nevertheless, possessing certain behavioral traits can increase the risk of ill health.

What Happens at Work?

Type A and Type B personalities appear to respond to their working environments in different ways, but further personality and behavioral variables must also be accounted for. For example, external attribution theory, whereby individuals attribute blame and divert responsibility to outside control, is also linked to higher perceived stress. Employees with both Type A tendencies and external attribution are most likely to feel stressed by their working environment.

In contrast, those with Type B personality are less likely to feel perceived stress, but may not be as effective in some roles. The composite of traits corresponding to Type A personality may make some people better suited for managerial positions, but perhaps less able to cope with the demands of the role. Those with type A personality may gravitate to professions where they feel a sense of usefulness, but those professions are also linked to high levels of stress. Similarly, Type B personalities may naturally feel more at ease, but when placed in some roles, they may not fit the required work ethic, or may not appear to fit it.

An Example of Type A and Type B at Work

This was certainly the case at a multinational corporation where Barry and Jim worked. Barry had worked in corporate finance since he graduated from university. He had managed to work his way up the corporate ladder quicker than most and had, in recent months, become the new Chief Finance Officer. The role itself was not without stress, but Barry had gravitated towards the profession because he felt it was a challenging role that he deserved. While Barry was deemed an excellent fit for the role, he began to feel the adverse effects of his job. In recent weeks, he lacked focus in his role, rushing through his tasks and behaving in an increasingly hostile manner towards his subordinates. The pressure of the role Barry had chosen was leading to symptoms of increasing burnout.

Jim had been working at the same multinational firm for a number of years. He had been in his previous role as an engineering manager for the past six years, and was good at it. Recently he was asked to take on more responsibilities as a senior manager within the firm. The increasing responsibility meant that the role came with more stress, and while Jim did not consciously feel the consequences of the stress, his performance suffered. His superiors did not feel that Jim was taking the increased responsibilities of the new role seriously enough.

Jim fit the stereotypical type B nature. His laid-back approach to work did not seem like a good fit to his superiors. Barry, on the other hand, while seen as an excellent fit for more senior responsibilities, was unable to manage his increasing stress in a constructive way.

Although Type A and Type B personality theory is an oversimplified model for the spectrum of personality and behavioral traits that individuals bring to work, nevertheless, it offers insight into the diverse ways people interact within their environment and the complexity that presents to organizations in managing workplace stress.

It is important that managers in organizations are aware that personality is not a fixed static state, but rather a malleable and ever-changing phenomenon that must be addressed individually. Jim and Barry need different kinds of help to fit into their new roles.

While each employee brings a unique outlook on the world and an ever-changing composite of traits, the workplace can play a role in shaping the employee too. In the better workplaces, it plays a good role, helping people find responsibilities that match them well and helping them deal with the inevitable stresses that occur.

Developing our strengths at work, learning how to do more of those things we’re good at and actually enjoy doing, has become a multi-million dollar global industry, but is it really making a difference? While a growing body of research suggests developing our strengths may be good for employees and for their organizations, in my experience turning theory into practice can be challenging.

What is the Impact of Existing Strengths Practices at Work?

Online strengths assessment tools like Realise2, Gallup StrengthsFinder, and the free VIA Survey have made discovering people’s strengths much easier, but understanding what people can do to develop their strengths is still woefully under-researched. We decided that looking at the impact of existing workplace strengths practices was the best way for us to find insights to guide our future approaches.

In 2015 a randomly selected, representative sample of 1,000 American employees found that those who reported feeling more engaged, energized, and flourishing at work also:

Were able to name their top five strengths

Had the opportunity to do what they do best each day

Had a meaningful strengths conversation with their supervisor in the last three months.

We also found that having meaningful strengths conversations with managers was more likely to happen if the organization was believed to be supportive of strengths.

In an effort to make it easier for people to achieve these outcomes, we later launched the first free global Strengths Challenge and invited people to discover their top five strengths, set a small daily strengths habit, and practice it for one week. More than 2,000 people from 65 countries around the world took part in the challenge, and more than a third of the participants improved their strengths knowledge, strengths use, and well-being outcomes.

What was particularly interesting, however, was the insight their baseline data gave us into the development of strengths around the globe. Remembering that this is a self-selected sample with an interest in developing their strengths and so any conclusions should be drawn with caution, here’s what they told us:

A lower proportion of participants from the UK could name their strengths (57%, compared to an average of 66%), indicating the initial step of strengths-identification could be particularly powerful there.

Canadian participants were the least likely to set weekly strengths-based goals and expectations (73% Disagreed), and the least likely to be able to name the strengths of their co-workers, suggesting more room for improvement putting strengths into practice in Canada compared to the other countries.

New Zealand participants were the most likely to say that they had the opportunity to do what they did best at work (61%). They were also most likely to be able to name strengths of their co-workers (54%). This group was most likely to have had a discussion about their strengths with their supervisor (37%), and also most likely to agree their organization was committed to building strengths (53%). Leading in these ways could help explain why NZ participants were the most likely to say they were engaged and energized at work (61%, compared to an average of 48%).

Could New Zealand workplaces be the positive deviants of strengths? Perhaps. It seems their alignment of organizational, management, and individual priorities around strengths may be delivering valued employee and workplace outcomes.

What’s Next? Show Up, Shine and Succeed

How might this data help you think about developing the strengths of your employees? If you’re looking for a practical evidence-based approach to bringing out the best in yourself or others at work, then join us for our six-week online strengths development program, Show Up, Shine and Succeed, starting on March 14. Registration is open now and closes on March 13.

Editor’s Note After being trained by the world’s leading strengths researchers, Michelle has worked with more than ten thousand people around the world – employees, managers, HR leaders, entrepreneurs, and coaches – to create this evidence-based blueprint for developing your strengths and creating lasting success on your own terms. There is an early bird price with a substantial discount for people who register before midnight on Sunday 6th March. Registration closes on March 13.

By enrolling in Show Up, Shine and Succeed, you gain life-time access to training videos, audio, and transcripts you can take anywhere, play sheets to help you immediately apply what you’re learning in the real world, and live coaching calls with Michelle. It’s a very affordable way to discover how you can do more of what you do best each day at work.

What does it mean that the link is sponsored? If you use our link to register, Positive Psychology News gets a share of your registration fee, which we will then use to run and upgrade the site. This is a program we are happy to sponsor.

This is an idea that has been around for quite some time, bubbling up from ancient Stoic and Buddhist philosophers but being reinforced today by modern new age gurus and the modern science of positive psychology. We have the power to change our mental and emotional responses to the world around us and can, in essence, create our own happiness.

This is a comforting and nowadays, popular notion. Although retraining our emotional responses can be extremely challenging, it is often easier than changing the world around us, and ultimately gives us greater control and responsibility over our own well-being.

But in a recent paper in the International Journal of Wellbeing, Ahuvia and colleagues identify some problems with this approach. This idea encourages us to blame misery on the individual, rather than identifying the situations that may be at the root of it. We could become too accepting of our external lot in life, rather than striving to correct the injustices in the world. Finally, there is a billion dollar self-help industry that seems to over-promise and under-deliver on the power of the mind to accomplish just about anything.

Ribbon Cutting for New School

Happiness comes from without.

An alternative approach would be to focus on the outer conditions. We can look at ways that our businesses, schools, organizations, governments, communities and society are established, and how they facilitate or impede human well-being. One could argue that these societal factors are the greatest determinants of our well-being, by providing the infrastructure for more human needs to be met.

But the researchers point out that external pathways to happiness have their own set of problems. They underestimate the capacity of the human mind to transcend its situation. For a variety of reasons such as hedonic adaptation, paradox of choice, and social comparison, improvements in societal conditions rarely seem to yield the kinds of subjective lift that we expect.

The researchers suggest that the true key to understanding happiness is through an interactionist approach, which “focuses on the way happiness emerges from the interaction of mind and world.” Happiness lies at the intersection of the internal and the external. This requires us to put aside simplistic ideas of happiness, in favor of an acknowledgement of the complexity and interdependence of human well-being on a variety of factors.

The researchers give several examples of interactionist themes across many domains of daily life. One example is religion, which seems to enhance well-being through the interactions between internal factors such as focusing on values and expressing positive emotions and external factors, such as social engagement and community involvement.

The most powerful idea from this paper is how this interactionist approach can influence the way we think about human well-being. It looks not just at the environment nor just at the mind, but instead at the ways the mind interacts with the body, the mind interacts with the environment, and the mind interacts with the community. It is in these dynamic relationships that the subjective experience of life really happens.

These researchers ask, “Whose responsibility is happiness?” It does not rest solely on the individual, and it does not emerge solely from the conditions of society. The researchers suggest co-responsibility as the answer: “The idea that happiness emerges as a collective and cooperative endeavor that requires both favorable life conditions and individual effort.”

It was a real treat to participate in the third cohort to go through CAPP along with fellow MAPP graduates Sherri Fisher (’06), Christine Duvivier (’07), Nadya Peeva (’08), and Katie Conlon (’13) and the rest of the curious and bright CAPP students. A subsequent article to come out in a few days will offer perspectives and takeaways from Sherri, Christine, Nadya, and Katie about their CAPP program experiences.

I was drawn to CAPP after reading Marie-Josée Shaar’s comprehensive description of the program in Certificate in Applied Pos Psych Program Launched. Furthermore, I was excited to have the chance to spend time in a high quality, empirical, and celebratory learning experience with Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, CAPP Program Founder and Lead Professor, and Louis Alloro, CAPP Co-Founder and Director. Both are fellow MAPP Alumni. See my story about Louis and SOMO leadership based on his 2008 MAPP capstone.

“CAPP training is one of the best applications of the MAPP University of Pennsylvania Masters of Positive Psychology) program!” ~ Author, Speaker, Mentor, Caroline Miller

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya and Louis Alloro

Emiliya and Louis created this exciting credentialed positive psychology educational/training program aimed at promoting flourishing in the world. CAPP, designed with a high tech/high touch brand of experiential learning, combines cutting edge research and applications with presentations by some of the world’s leaders in the field of Positive Psychology. It promotes a dialog which creates a better understanding of what matters most, and what makes life worth living. Emiliya deftly embraces and delivers Seligman’s PERMA theory of well-being as an underpinning for the CAPP coursework. She is a master edutainer*, a trainer, scholar, professor, and PhD Student in Mind/Body Medicine at Saybrook University.

Emiliya has expanded the PERMA model, advancing the idea of PERMA-V, the V for Vitality. Ever since McKenzie’s work in 1909, vitality has been recognized as a beneficial and necessary ingredient in the recipe for flourishing. As a PhD Candidate at Temple University in the department of Kinesiology, College of Public Health, Well-Being and Social Justice, my research and applications aim at advancing the psychology of positive movement.

The CAPP curriculum recognizes the importance of bodily movement in in the quest for flourishing lives. It offers a superb somatic component seamlessly integrated into every weekend onsite. Attention to the body helps students to manage their energy during full days packed with learning. CAPP meets one weekend a month, and is augmented by an outstanding online platform, virtual meetings, real time calls, presentations, exercises, active learning, and communications.

MAPP for me was a beautifully intense and transformational experienced. I loved the opportunity to study positive psychology in a different country. The diversity of the program at UEL enhanced my depth of learning and provided unique perspectives on the field. I have been truly blessed in my post-MAPP life, because I had the opportunity to immediately become involved in the Flourishing Center’s CAPP program! I thought that depth of learning and beautiful community created by MAPP was the best experience in my life until I became involved with CAPP.

I have had the pleasure of assisting with both the CAPP.2 and CAPP.3 classes, and it has been an incredibly meaningful experience to connect and grow with the change agents of the world brought together by this program. The breadth of positive psychology topics covered within the CAPP program greatly enhanced what I learned within MAPP. The CAPP program synthesizes and distills an incredible amount of information into a student-friendly format that stays true to the science at heart of positive psychology, while emphasizing the need for the work to be applied to ourselves and the world at large.

Erin Nichole Smith

The deep sense of connection created within the CAPP community is absolutely one of the most powerful aspects of the program. I have been honored to learn, laugh, dance, cry, teach, and fall in love with everyone within the CAPP community. Those wanting to join the CAPP program will not only gain invaluably deep knowledge of the field and learn how to apply this work in their lives, but will become part of a unique community that creates upward spirals of connection and positivity as we grow and learn together.

PERMA-V! I love that the CAPP program also brings vitality into the PERMA model of flourishing. CAPP’s emphasis on the mind-body connection and the need for positive psychology to take a holistic look at well-being, not just from the neck up, makes it such a unique program. One of my favorite CAPP moments is always when we use biofeedback mechanisms to look at stress, positivity, and heart-rate variability in real time with students, and monitor blood-flow to student’s extremities as they go through a love and kindness meditation. For students to see how dramatically their own bodies can change as a result of their thoughts is such a powerful real-time demonstration of the inseparable connection between mind and body when it comes to flourishing.

Like Erin, I believe the CAPP community has truly touched my heart and given me a richness of learning. Like the burgeoning MAPP programs springing up around the world, the high quality CAPP experience leads people toward whole health, well-being, healing, flourishing, and love across all domains of life. CAPP is relatively accessible with more locations being established worldwide, and is helping to bring Martin Seligman’s 2051 moonshot goal to fruition.

An edutainer (Bass, 2012, personal communication) combines the art and science of teaching; this term is part of Health Promotion nomenclature.

The CAPP acronym has been used in three great programs that contribute to world-wide flourishing:

Today, as I do on most mornings, I pop my earbuds in and take a brisk walk along a route in my neighborhood. I’m moving to the beat of an excellent playlist of my own choosing. The stiff damp wind is out of the east. Though I live more than fifteen miles from the nearest beach, from the scent of the blowing mist I can imagine that the surf is crashing in just a few blocks away. It is still early, and the lead-gray sky is made darker in the places where the fog is still thick. By most people’s standards it is not a beautiful day.

None of the other walkers, runners or bike riders greets me with, “Gorgeous day, isn’t it?” Even the usually perky Puggle dog on my block sits quietly on his front steps among the first colored leaves that have fallen from a hundred year-old maple tree. Its ancient roots push up through the stone fence at the edge of the property. Just the same, I feel pleasantly filled up by the beautiful things I see, hear, smell, and feel around me.

It may be possible to take this same walk every day and not experience anything new and uplifting. But because I have the strength of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence, I cannot help but notice everything from the bees buzzing in to find their place in the huge flowers of the butterfly bush to the smell of fall on the breeze to the easiness of the stride of the runner who has just passed me. In the now overgrown front garden of the next house along my walk is a tall stalk with several green milkweed pods not yet ready to pop open. Food for next year’s gorgeous Monarch butterflies, I imagine.

Continuing along my usual route I come to the bank parking lot where the damp wind is blowing the scent of “eau de dumpster” my way. I pick my pace up to a jog. Another quarter of a mile down the road an antique house has the windows boarded up. A developer has uprooted all of the trees and scraped off the grass and topsoil from the property. Not long ago two families lived here with their small children and dogs. I watched them water the potted plants on stone front steps that are now missing.

“Who let them do this?” I ask myself with my beauty and excellence voice.

As with all strengths, Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence feels natural and right to the person who has it. I know that I have this strength because things that are not either beautiful or excellent (admittedly to me) push this strengths button. I remember to say to myself, “I’m having a B and E moment” when I start to feel the “ick” of disgust (the opposite of elevation) rising within me. I even have a friend who shares the strength with me, and we regularly text each other with pictures or commentary about our moments.

Sources of Awe and Wonder

As a strength, Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence is more than just our preferences in dumpster location or local property development. According to Peterson and Seligman’s Character Strengths and Virtues, Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence is “the human tendency to feel powerful self-transcendent emotions.” Awe, wonder, and elevation are elicited by the perception and contemplation of beauty and excellence.

Imagine an awe-inspiring double rainbow against an angry grey sky. Any uplifting sensory experience can lead to these transcendent emotions.

An additional way to consider Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence is to think of the pleasurable openness and awe we feel when enjoying the highly developed skills and virtues of others. This awe may be experienced in the incredible “Wow!” of watching a basketball free-throw shot go through the net without even touching the rim or the seemingly impossible leap of the soccer goalkeeper making a save.

It could be the almost dumbstruck quality we feel after watching a film that has elicited so much emotion that we have nothing to say about it at first.

It could be the wonder we feel when reading an author’s clarity of thought presented in a few artfully chosen words.

It could be the deep admiration we feel when hearing someone thank the firefighter who rescued people and pets from a brightly burning building.

Unlike a more cognitive strength like curiosity, Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence has a strong set of emotions connected to it. You know that you have this strength because you feel it strongly, not just because you think, “Isn’t that lovely? I wonder who created it?” It is more than astonishment.

Researchers including Ekman and Keltner have identified certain bodily responses and facial expressions such as wide-open eyes, an open mouth, goose bumps, tears, and a lump in the throat that typically accompany beauty and excellence experiences. Emmons and McCullough have found that after an elevating experience of beauty and excellence, a sense of grateful admiration wells up.

In addition to things like music, art, architecture, sport, and nature, religious and spiritual experiences are often connected to Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence. This strength is a pathway for moral and spiritual advancement. A sense of the power of the divine is intimately connected with awe. The profound gratitude one feels for both the beauties of creation and the powers of the natural world are evidence of this strength.

Some people might be scared by a thunderstorm while others might be awed. In those moments, the person with the strength of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence is able to transcend ego and instead be moved to an awareness of the vastness and amazement that the world has to offer. Time slows down. In such moments a person may feel drawn to future opportunities for using the strength.

Developing the strength of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence gives us some added bonuses. We are more likely to feel expansive, positive, and grateful. We can savor enjoyment without feeling a need to do anything right then. Any compelling action tendencies may be delayed. As we know from Fredrickson, positive emotions broaden the possible scope of action. Those positive emotions also build a range of psychological resources. In addition, Haidt has found that elevation mediates ethical behavior. When we demonstrate elevating behavior, people that follow our actions are more likely to exhibit interpersonal fairness and self-sacrifice.

An Example of Beauty and Excellence

I believe that the late Chris Peterson had the strength of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence. When I was a graduate student at Penn he was my teacher and advisor. I remember hearing about the city’s MuralArtsProgram from him on a chilly walk through Philadelphia while he pointed out his favorite paintings. This is their mission statement:

WE BELIEVE ART IGNITES CHANGE.

We create art with others to transform places, individuals, communities and institutions. Through this work, we establish new standards of excellence in the practice of public and contemporary art.

Our process empowers artists to be change agents, stimulates dialogue about critical issues, and builds bridges of connection and understanding.

Our work is created in service of a larger movement that values equity, fairness and progress across all of society.

We listen with empathetic ears to understand the aspirations of our partners and participants. And through beautiful collaborative art, we provide people with the inspiration and tools to seize their own future.

That feeling you now have? It is elevation, courtesy of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence.

Editor’s Note: Sherri’s articles on Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence was commissioned for the Positive Psychology News book, Character Strengths Matter.

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